Harry Macklowe has queued up a menagerie of fiberglass giraffes, elephants and rhinos to attract buyers amid a sea of new developments

Rendering of 200 East 59th St. in Manhattan. Harry Macklowe has lined up a menagerie of giraffes, elephants and rhinos to draw buyers to his new condo project.
DBOX for Macklowe Properties

Rendering of 200 East 59th St. in Manhattan. Harry Macklowe has lined up a menagerie of giraffes, elephants and rhinos to draw buyers to his new condo project.

DBOX for Macklowe Properties

A luxury condominium is for sale. Bring on the safari animals!

Ever since Tony the Tiger made his debut in the 1950s, animals have been a staple of the ad business—but not so much in the rarified realm of Manhattan real estate.

Until now. With the competition for buyers intensifying as new projects launch around the city, developer Harry Macklowe has queued up a menagerie of giraffes, elephants and rhinos to draw buyers to his new condo project, a 35-story modernist concrete and glass building across the street from Bloomingdale’s flagship store on East 59th Street.

In videos, renderings and social-media posts, a friendly looking giraffe peers over the railing of a glass-walled terrace, munching on some greenery. An elephant rears up, placing a front foot on a terrace railing to chase some red balloons.

In a few weeks, after the top floor is poured at the building, known as 200 East 59th St., an 18½ foot tall fiberglass replica of a giraffe will be trucked in and mounted on a temporary pedestal, along with a 10 foot tall, 12 foot long elephant, Mr. Macklowe said, adding that he found the statues in Southampton, New York.

Rendering of 200 East 59th St. in Manhattan. In a few weeks, an 18½ foot tall fiberglass replica of a giraffe will be trucked in and mounted on a temporary pedestal to attract buyers to this new 35-story condo building.
PHOTO: DBOX FOR MACKLOWE PROPERTIES

Mr. Macklowe, the 79-year-old developer who was the creative force behind New York’s tallest completed residential tower, 432 Park Ave., says the animals are intended to showcase the spaciousness of the glass-walled balconies that wrap the corner building on two sides.

"It is a way to tell the world that the building is special and to give a personality," he said.

There are more than a half-dozen new condominium developments on the market in east midtown, typically designed from the same playbook, many with modern, understated kitchens and stonework in the bathrooms.

Donna Olshan, a broker who tracks sales in the luxury market, said this makes it hard for any one development to stand out, despite marketing gimmicks and parties designed to lure brokers to new buildings.

"I am suffering new development fatigue," she said. "Nothing differentiates one project from another."

To meet this marketing challenge, Mr. Macklowe developed a building that has an unusual attribute—wide wall-to-wall terraces on two sides—and built a marketing campaign around it.

Mr. Macklowe paid $86.7 million in 2014, property records show, for four low-rise buildings on the corner of Third Avenue and East 59th Street, at the border of Midtown and the Upper East Side.

The building, designed by CetraRuddy Architecture, has a wide base for a store or showroom and a narrow setback residential tower of just more than 4,000 square feet per floor including elevators, stairs and mechanical spaces.

The concrete support columns for the tower were placed outside the building on the terraces, creating a column-free space inside and seven-foot-wide outdoor spaces that extend more than 93 feet along the exterior in some two-bedroom apartments, designed to amplify the sense of spaciousness of the building.

The large terraces and glass walls give the building a Miami Beach look, Mr. Macklowe said, and don’t count against the zoning code that sets limits on the size of a building.

Each of the 67 units has outdoor spaces, typically with entrances from both living rooms and bedrooms, and many apartments have views of the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge or, on upper stories, of Central Park. Prices start at $2.1 million for a one-bedroom apartment.

Mr. Macklowe said the idea for the animals emerged from a staff meeting, after he explained that the terraces were big enough to house an entire circus.

Rendering of 200 East 59th St. in Manhattan. Developer Harry Macklowe said he is using fiberglass animals to ‘tell the world that the building is special.’
PHOTO: DBOX FOR MACKLOWE PROPERTIES

Keith Bomely, a senior partner at design studio DBOX, which created the campaign, said in previous marketing campaigns the firm had "played with putting pets in marketing before but never large wild safari animals."

Giraffes, in particular, aren’t entirely new to real-estate sales. Nearly three decades ago, a live giraffe was brought in to photograph the residence to illustrate the unusual properties of a house, Villa dall’Ava, designed by architect Rem Koolhaas on hilltop in Saint-Cloud outside of Paris. It had a living space suspended over thin, angled columns that resembled the spindly legs of giraffe.

During the last real-estate boom, Richard Pandiscio, designed a marketing campaign for a new building in lower Manhattan around a beaver holding a martini glass, in a building then known as William Beaver House.

Mr. Pandiscio said the campaign was successful until the 2008 financial crisis. Then, "it went off the rails when the market headed south," he said. The building at 15 William St. is now known as 15 William.

Sometimes, he said, buyers can react negatively to people shown in marketing, based on their race, age, style and attitude, and animal marketing can be better.

"Animals can be a safer, softer, less threatening bet," Mr. Pandiscio added.

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